Memeorandum

March 21, 2018

As Much As I Hate Seeing A Nazi Win Something...

The Republicans in Illinois-3 managed to draw some ghastly headlines which will be fodder for late night comedians and Paul Krugman. The NY Times manages a bit of fairness and balance:

Denounced by His Party as a Nazi, Arthur Jones Wins Illinois G.O.P. Congressional Primary

Say what?

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier described as a Nazi by the Illinois Republican Party, won the Republican primary on Tuesday in the state’s Third Congressional District, a heavily Democratic district that includes part of Chicago and its suburbs, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Jones, 70, unsuccessfully sought the nomination five times before, and his victory on Tuesday was a foregone conclusion after the Republican Party failed to draft another candidate to enter the race against him.

The Times coverage is decent but overlooks a lot. The short version is this: the incumbent, Dan Lipinski, is a pro-life anti-ObamaCare Blue Dog Democrat who was locked in a near-death struggle with a progressive challenger. The Nazi, Jones, had been kept off the ballot in cycles past by the invocation of technicalities. So the plan was to DQ Jones and let Republican crossover voters in the primary keep Lipinski alive. Since Lipinski won, barely, that part of the plan succeeded.

In 2016, for example, the Republican Party also failed to run a conventional candidate. Jones was the only one to submit signatures but the party managed to disqualify him to keep him off the primary ballot. They had the same plan for 2018 but Jones outmaneuvered them with a last-minute filing:

How did this happen? Jones, a perennial candidate, snookered the GOP.

Nobody else ran as a Republican in the primary because politics is a results-oriented business and the chance of a Republican winning are slim. The boundaries were drawn by Democrats to elect a Democrat. Rep. Dan Lipinski, the incumbent, will face Marie Newman in the Democratic primary, and one of those two will win on Nov. 6. There are other Democratic strongholds in the Chicago area featuring a lone Republican. It can be a Maytag repairman-like assignment.

...

Jones, who campaigned for the same seat in the 2016 primary, was removed from the ballot that year after the Illinois Republican Party found paperwork errors and filed a successful objection to his candidacy with the state Board of Elections. The GOP tried to do the same this election cycle, but Jones had cleaned up his paperwork. He also appears to have kept a low profile, collecting signatures to meet eligibility requirements by going door-to-door and then waiting until the Dec. 4, 2017, deadline to file. If only others had noticed.

If [challenger] Newman decides to run in 2020, she’d be the favorite in the race. This cycle, an actual neo-Nazi ran unopposed in the GOP primary in the 3rd District. Because the state has an open-primary system, Republican voters in the district could have chosen to vote in the Democratic primary and back Lipinski. (The irony of a Bernie Sanders-backed candidate losing thanks to crossover votes in an open primary was not lost on Twitter.)

Sophia Olazaba, a field manager for the Newman campaign, said she doesn’t doubt that some Republican voters crossed over. “Even when we were canvassing, a lot of homes have had both Jeanne Ives and Dan Lipinski signs, so those people could have crossed over,” she said, referring to the GOP gubernatorial candidate whose entire campaign was premised on her opposition to legal abortion.

Another volunteer, Sabrina Ithal, also from the 3rd district, mentioned that the open primary format could have actually worked in their favor: “I converted quite a few Republicans who voted Democrat for the first time in 30-40 years today.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes legal abortion, made re-electing Lipinski a major priority, dumping big money into the race and working the ground to get out the anti-abortion vote on his behalf.

So the Republicans had a strategy - leave their primary line open, disqualify Jones if he showed up (a timeless Illinois ploy familiar to Obama fans and foes) and hope their voters kept Lipinski afloat. And it could have worked, just as Virginia could have advanced in the NCAA tournament.

And just as the Illinois Republicans failed to find a challenger for Jones, another safeguard of the political system seems to have broken down, as well: The state’s ballot-access guidelines, which Mooney told me are intended to “limit the fringe element from cluttering up the ballot,” required Jones to get the signatures of 603 registered voters. I spoke with multiple people who signed Jones’s petition, and they were shocked to learn they had supported the candidacy of a former Nazi. “I probably just signed it because he asked me to,” said 63-year-old Linda Florczak-Wieser of LaGrange when I called her on Wednesday. Another voter from nearby Worth said she didn’t even recall signing the petition in the first place. And when I asked 93-year-old Alice Brunell how she felt about Jones’s views, the Bridgeview resident replied incredulously, “I didn’t know that!”

The peril and promise of these ballot access rules is that ordinary registered voters are empowered - the party bosses cannot unilaterally dismiss reform minded, "rage against the machine" candidates like in the good old days. On the other hand, sometimes shit happens.

It's easy to be an ex-post genius, but suppose the Republicans had run their own candidate but, because their energy and money was with Lipinski, the Nazi won anyway? Really bad.

Or suppose the Republicans opposed the Nazi, put some effort into it, and managed to see both Lipinski and the Nazi lose. Will that be helpful this November?

The local Republicans had a plan that could have worked perfectly but didn't. That doesn't mean the alternative plans didn't also have paths to poor results.

Apparently Republicans will muster a write-in sacrificial lamb for the November vote. And Krugman, Oliver and the other progressive entertainers will have their fun.

Good morning! Miss Marple has privided some lousy winter weather for me today but i need to remember the speech Bill Murray made in Groundhog Day on the day he finally done good..." basking in the hearths and hearts of Punksitawny as Checkov said something or other..."I couldnt think of a finer day to head to Shapiro's for pickles and pleasant political chat.

Just pounded a double espresso and a small esprresso frapucino sans whipped cream, and I'm off past the Slippery Noodle, Indiana's oldest still operating bar where Miss M's granddad undoubtedly used to hang out, and Shapiro's looms only 15 minutes away. Did I say Good Morning!

On iggy’s link on the last thread to the piece on Pinker: I’ll give Pinker credit for at least being pro-capitalist, anti-climate change hysteria, unlike many “public intellectuals.” At times he even sounds like the great Julian Simon. I’m guessing Simon, being an Orthodox Jew, had a better grasp on the bigger picture than Pinker, though.

Former Vice President Joe Biden ​didn’t pull any punches when he told an anti-sexual assault rally that he would have “beat the hell out” of Donald Trump for the way he disrespects women, according to a report.

“A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,'” Biden told students at the University of Miami on Tuesday, ABC News reported. “They asked me if I’d like to debate this gentleman, and I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.'”

“I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms my whole life,” Biden continued. “I’m a pretty damn good athlete. Any guy that talked that way was usually the fattest, ugliest S.O.B. in the room.”

Surprise surprise all the leftwing JournoList organizations are reporting that Trump and Kelly are "furious" that someone inside Trump's inner circle decided to tell the WAPO the details of Trump's congratulations call with Putin.

No doubt every brainwashed and indoctrinated leftwinger will believe that to be 100% true because the WAPO says so.

Funny how no one inside Trump's inner circle ever leaks to Fox News or the WSJ.

It occurs to me that one reason the gun grabbers overreacted to Parkland and not LV is that the shooter survived, so the media attention will last longer. The Md shooter story will be dead and buried before the body is, not just for political reasons.

Page, who was representing himself in the lawsuit, indicated that he plans to file another lawsuit.

“Similar to the slick maneuvers by [James] Comey & [Andrew] McCabe in the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] over recent years, clever lawyers for powerful entities often manage to briefly pull the wool over the eyes of busy District Court Judges,” Page said in a statement. “My future updated Complaint will shine an honest light and help restore justice.”

NEW: White House expected to unveil IP tariffs tomorrow; @realDonaldTrump will be briefed again in two weeks to consider second phase of penalties including visa, investment restrictions. Sources say POTUS worried about severe impact on US universities.

We all know that if the same thing happened in reverse (i.e. the Democratic candidate in a very safe Republican district ended up being an actual Communist who praised Stalin to the nines) the conservative bloggers would have just as much fun as Krugman & co. will have with the Nazi.

After shaving more than $20 off its share price earlier this week, Facebook stock moved back into the green Wednesday as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would publicly address the company's relationship with Cambridge Analytica some time during the next 24 hours.

At the same time, another lawsuit has been brought against the company, the second since the New York Times and the Observer reported over the weekend that the company had failed to stop CA from using data improperly gathered from tens of millions of users, a Maryland woman sued Facebook Tuesday in a San Jose, Calif. court. Her suit was filed on behalf of other Facebook users whose data were accessed by CA without their explicit permission, Bloomberg reported.

Circling back to Zuckerberg, the company's founder and longtime CEO attributed the delay in making a statement to his desire to say something "meaningful" rather than delivering a quick, boilerplate comment, Axios reported.

You can now use Airbnb to rent President Donald Trump’s St. Martin beach house for a whopping $11,000 a night, Forbes reported Wednesday.

Le Château des Palmiers, Trump’s beachside villa, is now available on Airbnb, starting at $11,418 a night, according to Forbes. The château has nine bedrooms and eight baths. Five of the bedrooms face the ocean — one of which is a “Jungle Room.” The other four bedrooms face the garden and feature a “Palm Room,” according to the listing. The house can accommodate up to 16 people.

“The Trump villa is probably the most exclusive property [on the island] — maybe there’s one or two that could rival it,” said Arun Jagtiani, Island Real Estate Team owner Arun Jactianti said. “It’s a very elite property,” he added.

It starts out with the stuff we know, where the FBI guys were trying to locate the whistleblower and "we have to get that guy." Then this:

“The FBI originally informed Judicial Watch they could not locate any records related to the tarmac meeting,” the nonprofit group added.

A knowledgeable FBI insider tells Big League Politics that it was bizarre and completely revealing that different security units, including apparent city police departments, were contacted about security detail for the trip before it happened:

“The email (dated Sunday July 03, 2016 2:06pm), list recipients who are redacted but they didn’t redact the general locations of the email. The locations are (SECD) which is Security Detail but the others are more interesting (LV) Las Vegas, (NY) New York, (HO) Houston, (CG) Chicago, and (WF) Washington Field. That leads to only, two possibilities. One, additional SWAT teams were supplementing the Phoenix trip. That would be a lot of man power for such a routine trip. Why so much? Two, there were different legs of that trip or previous trips that were of concern!”

The insider is also concerned about the level of access ABC News had to the Justice Department, with the news agency acting as a kind of warning system for DOJ officials that a scandal was breaking out:

“First, the email (dated June 28th, 2016 1:14pm), which is from Mike Levine to several DOJ emails. How does Mike Levine of ABC News have such direct lines of communication with so many DOJ big wigs. I can understand him having a source’s phone number at the DOJ but it’s like he’s a DOJ employee sending out an all agency heads up.”

Big League Politics reported that an audiotape exists of the President’s conversation with Loretta Lynch on the plane, but the National Security Agency (NSA) refuses to release it.

Well it was another fun lunch today with Miss Marple and everybody should rest easy knowing she has a beautiful used black Mitsubishi SUV (something like this but not quite as spiffy) that looks like it fits her like a glove and has plenty of room for Maggies dog food in back. Well done Family JOM!

Today we did not do much political stuff at all since she knew I was 24 hours delayed in thread catch-up so we mainly chatted about family stuff in general. I was a bit slow since we hit Kilroy's running last night, arriving about 2:41 AM, but my partner bailed out for an important phone call after only 2 pints and my Fav bartender had already pre-poured us each 4 pints before shutting the pumps, so I had to kill 6 pints in about 30 minutes, ergo it was a tad tougher than usual getting up this morning but thankfully Miss Marple didn't light a match anywhere near me.

What I thought of big interest today was learning from Miss M that Indianapolis was supposedly designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the same frog that designed Washington DC.
I suppose that makes sense once you see the plans of the 2 burgs set up side by side with those odd signature streets shooting off at 45 degree angles from a central circle.
The drafted plan (above) for Indy is from 1821 and here's downtown Indy in 1820.

And I learned that the main north-south drag thru the center of Town, "Meridian Street," is on some Meridian of consequence which I'll have to look up.

I took half my Reuben home in a doggy bag since the beers last night left me less room than normal, whereas Miss M did beautiful on the Low Carb Coconut Cream Pie diet and didn't take anything home to Maggie. Cheers, Miss M. Who knew one could eat a corned beef reuben with a fork?

Paul said, “I think special prosecutors have too much power and that we really shouldn’t have them. I would not have appointed Mueller.”

He continued, “There really is no reason why Mueller is investigating things other than Russian collusion. If there is no Russian collusion, he should wind up, close his investigation, let’s move on.”

He added, “I haven’t seen any evidence of that, and I don’t believe there was any evidence. Did Russians try to influence our election? In all likelihood yes. What should we do? We should start working together to try protect ourselves both cybersecurity and otherwise and our electoral process. Absolutely let’s do that. But instead, it’s this sort of witch hunt now that’s become very very partisan. And now we’re seeing all these people from the intelligence community Brennan, Clapper, all of them, piling on and exposing themselves to be left-wing Democrats who hate the president. So yes I think we have to be very careful how much power we give to those in the intelligence community.”

just waiting for all of the media to make their way to IL-3 and the inevitable scene where dem operatives make any Republican have to explain and denounce what the dude says or has said in the past (... about 25 years ago this crazy douchebag said something and wow you were in elementary school at that time and drew something on this piece of paper that looks suspiciously like a swastika ... when did you first become a nazi generic republican?)

Some interesting thoughts, h/t BJG blog.https://straightlinelogic.com/2018/03/20/trumps-new-world-order-by-robert-gore/
a snip:
Close study of The Godfather yields far better insight into the mind and methods of Donald Trump than the invariably wrong blather of the media and most of the commentariat. A cottage industry of pundits hyperventilates daily about his tweets and public pronouncements, 90 percent of which is fluff and misdirection. It’s a much smaller group who focus on what Trump actually does.

Three realities confronted Trump when he assumed office. The US empire is unsustainable, so too is the trajectory of its spending and debt, and the government is fundamentally corrupt. It would be foolish to bet Trump doesn’t understand these issues and the linkages between them.

Trump faced an insurrection from official Washington. The insurrection, borne of desperation and the miscalculation that Clinton would win, was laughable and its execution grossly incompetent. Trump saw through it and turned it to his advantage.

Someday Robert Mueller will bring his pathetic investigation to a close. It’s been a gift that keeps on giving for Trump. It’s shone a light on government criminality and the shadowy Deep State, which 74 percent of Americans now believe runs the country. Establishment hostility towards Trump is rooted in fear of exposure of that criminality, not policy differences. Once elected, Trump had access to troves of secrets, and controlled the investigatory and prosecutorial resources of the US government. That’s what kept the powers that be and their minions awake at night and launched the insurrection.

Montreal: We're in the old city which looks like Paris..for a few blocks any way. The shops are largely full of junk and remind me of small Midwestern stores in the 1950's. The food--is very good, especially the bread which is great everywhere. Outside of the old part of the city, the place looks like Milwaukee.
Visited the former Jewish quarter and sampled the food--Have to reset Duddy Kravitz again because these were the sites of scenes in the movie and saw Leonard Cohen's home which he rarely lived in. It's kinda boring actually.

@realDonaldTrump
13m13 minutes ago
More
I called President Putin of Russia to congratulate him on his election victory (in past, Obama called him also). The Fake News Media is crazed because they wanted me to excoriate him. They are wrong! Getting along with Russia (and others) is a good thing, not a bad thing.......

@realDonaldTrump
4m4 minutes ago
More
.....They can help solve problems with North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran and even the coming Arms Race. Bush tried to get along, but didn’t have the “smarts.” Obama and Clinton tried, but didn’t have the energy or chemistry (remember RESET). PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!